A Tibetan graduate student is scheduled to lecture on Tibetan
medicine at Harvard University for three months starting from early
September.
Yangga is the first graduate student trained in Tibet to lecture in
the United States.
"In talks with overseas experts on Tibetan medicine, I found some
are not equal to Tibetan secondary school students in terms of
Tibetan medicine. I wish to help more people in other parts of the
world to understand Tibetan medicine through academic exchanges,"
Yangga said.
Yangga is renowned at Harvard since comparing notes with a Harvard
professor at an international symposium on Tibetan medicine held in
Lhasa, capital of southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, in
2000. The Tibetan briefed the American on the centuries-old
medicine and its supernatural functions, which aroused the
professor's interest.
Yangga said, "I'll focus on the development of Tibetan medicine. As
all the materials I am going to quote are obscure ancient terms, I
have to translate them into English."
After studying Tibetan medicine at the Tibet College of Tibetan
Medicine for more than 16 years, Yangga has a good command of its
theory and clinical practice.
His greatest wish is to develop Tibetan medicine for future
generations. His forthcoming visit to the United States will serve
that aim.
Tibetan medicine was developed over a long period by the Tibetan
people based on their experiences in life and production, absorbing
the strong points of traditional Chinese medicine and ancient
Indian and Arabic medicines.
It
has miraculous curative effects on cerebrovascular disease,
rheumatism, rheumatoid arthritis and chronic hepatitis. It is also
notably effective against tumors, diabetes, blood diseases,
hepatocirrhosis and other diseases which Western medicine is unable
to deal with.
However, for thousands of years, the information was kept inside
temples and lamaseries in Tibet. Tibetan doctors never categorized
the specialties of Tibetan medicine and never established files for
patients.
"This unique medical system needs theoretical creation. Only by
developing Tibetan medicine, can we harness its great vitality,"
Yangga said, adding the new generation of Tibetan physicians should
make Tibetan medicine the property of all countries.
The Tibet College of Tibetan Medicine is the only research and
educational base for the study of Tibetan medicine in China. It
assembles the elite of Tibetan medicine from across the
country.
The college followed time-honored medical traditions and had
trained many Tibetan medicine doctors since the 1980s. They were
playing a key role in the country's 57 Tibetan medicine hospitals
and three research institutes, Yangga said.
Though veteran Tibetan medicine doctors had accumulated rich
theoretical and practical experience, they still found it difficult
to solve some problems as the way of life in Tibet had changed a
lot, Yangga said.
Modern science and technology have saved many aspects of Tibetan
medicine from being lost. But, Yangga insisted, the premise of
absorbing modern medical theory was to retain the true feature of
Tibetan medicine. Undue reliance on Western medicine would reduce
Tibetan medicine to nothing.
He
is studying ways to integrate public health in the West with
Tibetan medicine as he thinks there is something in common between
the two.
(Xinhua News
Agency July 31, 2002)